The Light of Burning Shadows

FIFTEEN

O ut in Nazalla Bay, the water rippled with the passing of a creature a few feet underneath the surface. It swam past the Black Spike and other ships at anchor and made straight for the shore.

Seven figures detached themselves from the shadows in the lee of a small hut and walked toward the shoreline.

The rippling water stopped and the body of Kester Harkon broke the surface. Its eyes were open and water gurgled from its mouth as it tried to scream. The jaws holding it released and slid back into the water and out of sight.

A hand quickly covered Harkon’s mouth as others grabbed the body and lifted it from the water and began carrying it away.

From farther out in the water, the creature rose again to watch the figures disappear into the night. It then slid back beneath the surface and swam past the Black Spike and headed not back out to sea, but into a river inlet.

From high up in the mast of the Black Spike, three pairs of eyes followed the creature’s progress until it vanished around a bend. Tyul Mountain Spring looked up at Dandy, the massive silver-beaked falcon perched in the crow’s nest, and whistled quietly to it. Dandy stretched out its neck and spread its wings, pumping them slowly. A squirrel perched on Tyul’s shoulder chittered quietly in his ear. Tyul reached up a hand as Jurwan jumped into it, and placed him inside his tunic. Tyul then climbed up the rigging until he was in the crow’s nest. Dandy’s wings flapped faster and then he launched himself skyward, grabbing Tyul gently by the shoulders with his talons.

Dandy rose a few more feet in the air, then pointed his body downward, tucking in his wings as he did so. Falcon, elf, and squirrel plummeted toward the water. At the last instant, Dandy spread his wings and soared just feet above the waves, angling toward the shore. A moment later he unclenched his talons. Tyul landed on the ground without a sound while Dandy flew into the night and was gone.

Tyul knelt and sifted the sand through his hands for several moments, then looked up, his eyes unblinking.

He walked quickly across the sand and past the hut, following a trail. He carried no weapons in his hands and only his bow and quiver on his back. Dressed in greens and browns and covered in leaf tattoos, he was invisible in the forest, but the dock area of Nazalla was no forest, though dangerous creatures also prowled there.

Two of them watched the elf walk into a narrow alley they knew had no exit, and followed in after him. Dressed in blacks and grays, only their knives glinted as they were pulled from tunics.

This would be easy.

The dunes of the Hasshugeb Expanse disappeared over the horizon in every direction. Under the moonlight, the gentle uniformity of their shape gave the desert the appearance of an ocean frozen in time just before the waves crested and began to tumble downward. Dark, curving shadows carved great chunks out of the far side of the dunes under their peaks, creating black holes where no light shone.

Perfect hiding places, Her Emissary thought.

Her Emissary moved to the first dune, still tired from its transformation and the power required to travel the great distance from Her mountain to here. A trail of black frost twinkled in its wake.

At the first shadow, it bent and placed an acorn from the Shadow Monarch’s Wolf Oak in the darkness and waited. Black flame sparked to life, but then guttered and went out.

Her Emissary stared at the sand. Was Her power not strong enough here? As soon as the thought entered its mind, it was banished. Something else was at work.

It reached out and touched the sand. White flame burst to life and Her Emissary’s moonlit shadow caught fire. The pain was exquisite. Every fiber of its being twisted in agony. It stood up and called forth the frost fire, struggling to put out the flame. Every second Her Emissary’s shadow burned, it knew it was dying. Marshaling its remaining energy, Her Emissary focused the frost fire and finally extinguished the flames. The distraction, however, had served its purpose.

Sand erupted in a geyser behind Her Emissary, hurtling it into the side of a dune. It jumped to its feet only to feel its shadow engulfed in white flame again.

Two scaly beasts crawled forth from a sandy pit, spitting fire. Pain once again wracked Her Emissary’s body. Through the roaring flame, Her Emissary saw great jaws lined with sharp teeth and eyes flickering with white fire.

“You are children of kaman Rhal,” Her Emissary said, the knowledge of its former self, Viceroy Faltinald Gwyn, coming back. It called forth more of the power of the black acorn deep in its chest. Her Emissary accepted the pain of the white fire as it marshaled icy flames like obsidian blades at its fingertips. When the frost fire was strong enough, it lanced out like a scythe, slicing into the scales of the creatures, which screamed ragged coughs of flame. The closest took the brunt of the black flame and collapsed in a writhing mass. The second climbed over the first, spitting more white flame and fusing the sand into glass underneath Her Emissary in an attempt to immobilize it. Molten glass seared Her Emissary’s skin even as the white flame burned it from the inside. The creature charged, its jaws opening wider in anticipation.

Her Emissary focused the power, fashioning a long, flickering spear of pure frost fire in its hand. As the creature lunged, Her Emissary stabbed down with the spear into the creature’s open mouth and down its throat. White and black flame spread across the sand, locked in a savage duel. The air steamed and shimmered, then crackled with ice.

The creature thrashed and tried to bite at the spear of flame, but its efforts slowly subsided. It then shuddered and fell to the sand, now motionless. The white flames died as the frost fire overtook them. Soon, there was nothing left of the two creatures but ash and one small piece of bone in each pile. Her Emissary bent to grab one, but before it could, a single white flame consumed each fragment and then was gone.

Standing up straight, Her Emissary looked around the dunes, the flaming spear still clutched in its hand. Nothing. No further threats. It was severely hurt, but pain was now its natural state of being. Its pain was nothing if it helped the Shadow Monarch achieve Her goals. Her Emissary flowed its senses outward, searching for more of Kaman Rhal’s creatures, but detected no sign of them. Satisfied, it let the flame die out.

It moved to the next dune and placed an acorn in its shadow. This time, black frost fire sprouted from the sand, followed by an inky black tendril of a sarka har.

Yes, Her forest would grow here.

Her Emissary began walking the dunes. As the acorns fell, the sarka har took root and began to grow. Roots dug deep into the sand, searching for the rock beneath. There was a power here, bitter, thin, and old, but it was energy nonetheless and it could be used.

Branches stretched to the sky, clawing the air as if to pull the very stars from the blackness. Her Emissary knew it was not in vain-after all-the Stars were returning. The Shadow Monarch had lost the first one. She would not lose another.

Her Emissary walked south, cutting across the desert with Her forest growing and rising behind it like a black, gaping wound. A small village stood in its way, and succumbed, the screams of the dying ringing like crystal on the night air. Still Her Emissary headed south, angling the line of trees toward a point in the desert only it could see.

Her Emissary needed no map, for it was guided by something stronger. It felt it.

Another Star would soon fall.

The power long banished from the world was returning, and it was as palpable as the crunching frost under its feet. Her Emissary quickened in its task. Konowa Swift Dragon and the Iron Elves would come seeking the Star, but they would already be too late.

Her Emissary was right. Konowa would not be the first to find the fallen Star.

But neither would Her Emissary.

Alwyn shifted on the pillows serving as his seat, but couldn’t get comfortable. His stomach rumbled. He had tried a bit of everything, including the roast lamb, but food had little appeal to him. It was as if his normal senses were no longer connected to his body. He scanned the room again. Any one of the patrons in the Blue Scorpion could be a spy for the Shadow Monarch, or even an assassin. He fidgeted some more and pulled his musket a little closer.

The sloshing of liquid made him turn. A waiter had quietly refilled his cup without Alwyn’s even hearing him approach. He vowed not to be surprised like that again even as he raised the cup to his lips and downed the liquid in one gulp. The rumbling in his stomach subsided and a warm wave moved through his muscles. He reached forward and grabbed one of the smoking tubes from the hookah and brought it to his lips, taking a long, slow puff. Water gurgled in the apparatus with a satisfying rumble. The smoke was cool and smooth in his throat, and when he blew it out several seconds later, he had stopped fidgeting.

“My leg doesn’t hurt,” he said to no one in particular. He patted the wood where his knee would be and said it again. “Can’t flee…feel, a thing.” The room was gently spinning. It was a strange effect. He wondered how they did it.

“Course you can’t feel it, it ain’t there,” Teeter said, ignoring the shared smoking device and drawing on his pipe. He pursed his lips and then blew a smoke ring across the room. An elderly man smoking a hookah had accepted the challenge and was blowing smoke rings back. Each time one got his ring to intersect the other’s, a few men clapped.

“S’not what I mean,” Alwyn said. “There’s no pain where they meet. It’s like the smoke just smoothes out the differences between the magics, you know?” He tried to show Teeter by moving his hands in the air, but his fingers just wiggled and soon he was transfixed by their movement.

“It ain’t regular tobacco, see,” Zwitty said, talking around a smoking tube in his mouth. Smoke curled up from his nostrils to wreathe his head in swirling gray, but what really gave him an eerie quality was the smile on his face. It looked real. “There’s a place in Celwyn where you can get this, but it ain’t cheap. Never knew where it came from. Might just have to see about taking some back when we ship out of here.”

This drew a loud laugh from Hrem and a snort from Yimt. Both raised themselves from the progressively reclined positions they had assumed as the evening went on. Zwitty’s smile disappeared, to be replaced with his more usual sneer.

“You’re a businessman now, are you?” Yimt asked. “Between the souvenirs you’ve been collecting on our island hops and now this, you’ll be able to buy a dukedom in what, another fifty years?”

“I ain’t took nothing that wasn’t rightfully mine,” Zwitty said, reaching out to pull his shako closer. “And what’s wrong with trying to make a bit of a profit? It’s not like we’re gonna be soldiers forever…”

“Found a cure for the oath, have you?” Hrem asked.

“I got one,” Alwyn said, reaching out a hand to pat his musket. Yimt intercepted it with a plate of sliced fruit wedges.

“Here, eat some of these and try not to talk rot,” Yimt said.

Alwyn looked down at the plate. Delicacies he’d only heard of seemed abundant here. There were oranges, lemons, and huge pink wedges called watermelon. Tasting any one of these would have filled him with glee just a few short weeks ago. He grabbed one of each so that Yimt would leave him alone.

“I think Alwyn’s on to something,” Zwitty said, clearly unwilling to let the subject drop. His scare in the alley was clearly still on his mind. “We’ve just accepted this curse and gone along and done everything we’ve been asked to do like good little soldiers for the Prince and the major. But what about us, eh? Who’s working to see that we get out from under this thing? Where’s our reward? Maybe that white fire’s the cure.”

“Zwitty has a…point,” Inkermon said. He was lying flat on his back staring at the smoke swirling around the ceiling. An empty bottle of wine was tucked under his arm, while another almost empty bottle balanced on his stomach. “The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the Creator may have sent it to rid us of this cursed oath.”

“By burning us and our shadows alive? Some bloody help that is,” Yimt said. “We’re better off with the magic we know.” He quickly looked around at them. “Provided we don’t use it.”

“We were better off before,” Alwyn said, his head clearing and visions of the islands flashing in his mind. “And the only way we’ll be better again is when we’re finally done with it, or it’s done with us.”

“Oath or not, we’re fed, we’re watered, and the night’s still young,” Teeter said, slapping his thigh and looking around at them. He reached out a boot and gave Scolly’s sleeping form a nudge, waking him up after the third kick. “And all of us are awake. So, where do they keep their women?”

Teeter had every soldier’s attention. Alwyn tried to laugh, but found his throat was constricted and his lips too dry to form sound. Women. It still didn’t seem possible to him that they were now relaxing in a pub-talking, eating, drinking-when just a few short days ago they had been in pitched battle. And now the idea of women seemed more foreign still.

Yimt motioned for them all to lean in, a gesture completely unnecessary, because every one of them was already crowding in around him. Alwyn elbowed someone to move over and was surprised when Inkermon elbowed him back.

“I spoke with the proprietor of this establishment earlier, and explained that we’ve been for some time deprived of companionship of a more delicate, but not too delicate, nature. After some persuasion,” Yimt said, patting his shatterbow, “he has made certain arrangements to remedy our predicament.”

“Yeah, but what about the women?” Scolly asked.

“He does mean women,” Alwyn said, finding his voice again.

Yimt looked to the ceiling. “Using subtlety on you lot is like a witch not wearing a hat…no point. Yes, women. There are women upstairs, but-” he said quickly as they all made to get up, “there is a catch.”

“Our money’s good here. You said yourself this guy knows which way the wind’s blowing,” Zwitty said.

“I did, and he does, but that’s not the problem. If you all go traipsing up the stairs as a group it’s going to attract attention from this crowd,” Yimt said, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, “and menfolk the world over get protective of their women, even the working girls, when outlanders show up.”

“So what did you work out?” Teeter asked.

“You go up one at a time. It keeps things respectable, and we prevent a riot.”

“Who goes first then?” Zwitty asked.

Alwyn suddenly found Yimt staring straight at him. A moment later the rest of the group, even Scolly, were staring at him.

“Maybe…maybe someone else should go first,” Alwyn said, unbuttoning his jacket farther. It had gotten very hot in the pub. “We have all night, right?”

Yimt shook his head. “No one’s been through more since we became Iron Elves than you, Ally, and I know I speak for every soldier here when I say if anyone deserves to go first, it’s you. Right, lads?”

There were nods of agreement and a few muttered “yeahs,” none of them overly enthusiastic, but no one was prepared to disagree with Yimt. At some level, Alwyn thought he did deserve to go first, but at a more fundamental level the idea scared him the way no rakke ever could.

“Well, get on with it then,” Teeter said, forcing a smile. “The sooner you get up there, the sooner the rest of us get a chance.”

This thought galvanized the group and the level of enthusiasm for Alwyn’s looming liaison grew.

“Easy, easy,” Yimt said, standing up and helping Alwyn to his feet. “He’s just going to enjoy a little fun, not storm the gates of the Shadow Monarch’s forest.”

A waiter arrived bearing more wine and another platter full of fruit, which worked to divert the interest of the soldiers long enough for Alwyn to find himself being pushed toward a set of stairs across the room. A man nearly as large as Hrem, wearing a red vest and voluminous blue pantaloons, stood barring the entrance, his two bare arms folded across his chest like mighty oaks. Alwyn turned to Yimt.

“Listen, I appreciate this,” he lied, “but I think someone else should go before me. What about you?” he asked, looking at Yimt.

Yimt smiled up at him. “I’m happily married, remember? And even if I was unhappily married, dwarfettes take marital vows seriously. Did you know they don’t wear a wedding ring? Chafes their finger when swinging an axe, which, as it happens, is the traditional marriage gift a mother gives her daughter.”

“Like a little silver one you mean?” Alwyn said, trying to picture it.

“Full-size and sharp enough to peel eggshells. Makes for one hell of a honeymoon, I can tell you that,” Yimt said, the smile on his face suggesting it was a type of hell not entirely unpleasant.

“Okay, then what about-”

“Ally,” Yimt said, holding up a hand, “there’s always a first time for everything, and this is yours. Enjoy. Just be yourself and she’ll find you the most fascinating man in the world.” He lowered his voice an octave. “She’s paid to.”

Alwyn looked up the stairs past the large man, then back at Yimt. “But look at me. I’m a freak. I have tree limbs for a leg. I can conjure black flame with a thought. I…I talk to dead people, and they talk back to me. I’m not normal, Yimt.”

“Owl droppings,” Yimt said. “So you’re a bit unique-just makes you that much more interesting. I’m a dwarf, Hrem’s a giant, Scolly’s a dullard, Teeter’s former navy, Inkermon’s holier than thee, thou, and they, and Zwitty is, well, Zwitty. Compared to us, you’re about as normal as we got.”

Alwyn wiped the sweat from his brow and took a couple of deep breaths, accidentally fogging his spectacles. “It’s just that, I haven’t exactly, you know…”

Yimt reached out a hand and placed it on his arm. “That, Ally, is the worst-kept secret in the regiment. Time to put an end to it.”

Alwyn nodded and turned toward the stairs, but Yimt’s hand drew him back.

“I don’t think you’ll be needing this where you’re going,” he said, gently lifting Alwyn’s musket out of his hand. “Now go.” Alwyn found himself spun around and facing the large man, who nodded at Yimt, then stepped out of the way. Alwyn looked up the stairs, then back at Yimt.

“They look a bit steep, and with my leg-”

“Which is no longer hurting you, remember?” Yimt said, giving him a firm push.

Alwyn stumbled up the first step then paused, said a silent prayer, and walked up.